


you'll be okay

by TFLatte



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Family Relationships - Freeform, Gen, but at least his relationship with his daughter gets less complicated eventually, tui has a Complicated relationship with the ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TFLatte/pseuds/TFLatte
Summary: The ocean keeps taking what Tui cares about.





	

The night before his daughter disappears, Tui has trouble sleeping. It feels as though there’s a voice just on the edge of hearing, whispering words he can’t quite understand.

He hasn’t felt like this since the night he and Kahele stole one of the canoes.

If he had his way, he would – not forget, never forget – but he would be able to avoid thinking about that night. But his daughter doesn’t know what he knows, and she looks to the water with the same need he once did, and he remembers it every time he sees her face.

He has nightmares about Moana vanishing, about looking for her and _knowing_ , feet heavy as stone as he approaches the shore, pushing leaves aside to reveal her broken, waterlogged, small and alone as the water laps around her still form. They come flooding back when she dashes into the grand _fale_ , shouting about voyaging and those damned _boats_ and he seizes a torch. If she hates him for this then so be it, but she’ll be _alive_ to hate him.

Then she finds his mother’s walking stick and the bottom drops out of his stomach.

* * *

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tui sees Moana back away and run out, but he doesn’t think anything of it. She’s young, and she and her grandmother have always been so close. More than anything he wishes he could preserve that childish part of her that believes the people she loves will never die.

His mother gives him a tired smile as he kneels by her side. She lifts a hand, straining as though weights are bound to it, and he takes it in both of his.

“You’ve always been a good son, Tui,” she murmurs, and his heart clenches.

“Just rest, Mother, don’t try to talk-” She shakes her head, just slightly, but he falls silent.

“Time enough for that soon.” Her fingers curl tighter around his hand. “She is just like you.”

He doesn’t need to ask, and he leans down to press his forehead against hers. “You always said I’d have a child just like me one day.”

“And you deserved it.”

“You said that too.” His voice catches in his throat. Tala sighs gently.

“One day soon, she’ll be okay. Trust her.”

He holds his mother’s hand tight and doesn’t realize that when she says “okay,” she means something different than he does.

* * *

 

Three days after his daughter disappears, Tui hasn’t spoken to Sina for two. The last time was when they argued loud enough to shake the posts in their _fale_.

Sina _knew_ , she caught Moana gathering supplies and didn’t stop her, and Tui can’t understand how she could let their daughter go to the ocean to join her grandmother. Sina had insisted that Moana would have found a way to go if Sina had tied her down, that all she could have done was see her away safely. _And doesn’t that sound familiar_ , some treacherous part of his mind whispers.

None of his people dare to bring it up with him, but he sees their worried looks, hears the murmurs, even catches Moana’s name a few times. He isn’t the only one who fears for her – though he is the only one who goes down to the water, the only one who flinches at the first glimpse of something on the sand and relaxes to see it’s only driftwood. The only one who stares at the glittering sea until his eyes hurt and prays to every god he knows to see the boat she took from the cavern.

This time, though, he isn’t looking – at least, not for Moana. He’s looking at the waves, remembering. Moana had been so small once, years ago. She’d reached for the water over his shoulder and he’d been strong enough to keep her safe.

Or maybe he never had been. Maybe the water had just let him think he was until it could call his only child away.

It takes him several minutes to realize he’s shouting, raging at the ocean, the selfish waters that refuse to be satisfied with anything they take – boats, friends, daughters. His throat grows hoarse and he finally slumps to the sand, shoulders heaving.

Tui hears footsteps in the sand behind him and doesn’t turn around. Sina puts her hand on his shoulder and he finally looks up, meeting her eyes, red with crying. She kneels beside him and they embrace, shaking.

* * *

 

A week and three days after his daughter disappears, Tui knows the darkness is not a disease – no disease turns a coconut tree black in minutes, and no disease leaves the creeping tendrils he’s seen reaching up the rocks. He has the village gather all the food they can and prays the darkness passes.

He thinks of Moana, and wonders if the darkness can reach her on her stolen boat.

* * *

 

Three weeks and two days after his daughter disappears, Sina calls him to see Motonui coming back to life. He watches as a dead, blackened flower unfurls into colorful life again – and then Sina turns and lets out a strangled noise he only barely understands. “ _Tui_.”

A canoe sails through the pass in the reef. From this distance, he can barely see the person sailing it. He doesn’t need to.

Moana jumps off her canoe and sprints to them and he pulls his wife and daughter into his arms, warm and solid and _alive_ , and his eyes are hot with tears. In the distance, Motonui is noticing the canoe, coming to see Moana returned home. At his shin, Heihei walks directly into his leg and stops, stymied by an impassable obstacle. Tui only has eyes for his family.

“I may have gone a little bit beyond the reef,” his daughter tells him, proud and embarrassed at once, and he smiles.

The first time he sails out, Moana beside him, his people behind him, Tui finally understands what the voice he could never quite hear always wanted.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So my excellent and amazing friend Jon suggested a Tui-centric fic to me and this is the result! Honestly, Tui has a rough time during the movie. He loses his mother and then his daughter runs away on the very same night. And he blames himself for his best friend's death. Poor guy. At least he gets to voyage in the end, right?
> 
> Fale - the open-air buildings seen throughout Motonui


End file.
